Handbook of History of Religions

SR No.: 007634
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Edward Washburn
Publisher: Sanmati Tirth Prakashan Pune
Total Pages: 678
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 2 MB

Page 575

duties and occupations of the four castes: The duty of a priest is to teach the Veda, his means of livelihood is to sacrifice for others and to receive aims; the duty of the warrior is to fight, his means of livelihood is to receive taxes for protecting the other castes; the duty of the V[=a]içya is to tend cattle, his means of livelihood 1s gain from flocks, farm, trade, or money-lending. The duty of a slave, Çudra, is to serve the three upper castes; his means of livelihood is the fine arts.]
[Footnote 16: It is this that has exaggerated, though not produced, that most marked of native beliefs, a faith which Intertwines with every system, Brahmanic, Buddhistic, or Hinduistic, a belief in an ecstatic power in man which gives him control over supernatural forces. Today this Yogism and Mah[=a]tmaism, which is visible even in the Rig Veda, is nothing but unbridled fancy playing with mesmerism and lies.]
[Footnote 17: The Hindu sectarian cults are often strangely like those of Greece in details, which, as we have already suggested, must revert to a like, though not necessarily mutual, source of primitive superstition. Even the sacred free bulls, which roam at large, look like old familiar friends, [Greek: aphetōn dniön tauron en tps tou lloseidonos lerps] (Plato, Kritias, 119); and we have dared to question whether Lang's 'Bull-roarer might not be sought in the command that the priest should make the bull roar at the sacrifice; and in the verse of the Rig Veda which says that the priests "beget (produce) the Dawn by means of the roar of a bull" (vii. 79. 4); or must the bull be soma? For Müller's defence of the Hindu's veraciousness, see his /India, What Can It Teach Us, p. 34.]
[Footnote 18: Some exception may be taken to this on the ground that moral laws really are referred to the Creator in one form or another, This we acknowledge as a theory of authority, but it so seldom comes into play, and there is so little rapport between gods and moral goodness, that